The Days Before
by Nothing for No one
Summary: The Days Before is a one-shot about the life of a young demigod we all know before she arrives to camp I'm considering on adding more chapters for more characters depending on how this goes so...


_Hey! thanks for giving this story a shot. I hope you like it. This is my __first publishing something I write so I'm a bit nervous. Also, english isn't my first language, so sorry for any mistakes!_

**Disclaimer: ** **I don't own Percy Jackson or any of it's characters**

She considered herself a freak for a long time. It wasn't something that one would notice at first glance, no. It wasn't something that would catch someone's eye. It wasn't physical, it had nothing to do with the way she look, it was how she acted around other kids her age, how she would talk back to anyone who dared stand in her way, not showing an aunt of respect for anyone who wasn't herself. It was the way she would glare at the other kids when they tried to approach her to see if she would like to play with them. The way she would lash out to anyone who was near her when she found herself in a foul mood, even if they had nothing to do with the problem at hand. She was mean and rash. She was disrespectful and spiteful. She wasn't afraid of hurting herself, and she sure as hell wasn't afraid of hurting others.

She had been in a foul mood when it happened, maybe that was the reason it happened at all. She was siting by herself on a table in the playground near the swings, watching the other kids playing from afar. She was sipping from her juice box when something hit her in the face, hard. She got up from the ground, seeing as the blow had thrown her face first to the ground, covered in juice from head to toe.

She spotted a football ball near her now crushed juice box; she walked towards it and picked it up all the way seeing red. How dared they do this to her, they were humiliating her, mocking her, _her _of all people. Didn't they know by now not to mess with her? She spotted a boy who looked to be a year younger than her, slowly walking towards her, visibly shaking from fear. He looked back to his friend who made motion for him to go ahead, they were obviously too afraid of approaching her themselves. The boy walked a crossed the playground until he stood in front of her and said "I'm really sorry, we were just playing and…", but before he could finish his sentence she brought her fist down to his face, the boy fell to the ground clutching his now bleeding nose. She didn't really know why she did it but she bend down and punched him again and again and again. The boy was helplessly trying to get away but she wouldn't let him, no. She punched and kicked and punched again making the boy cry out in pain and tear up. She didn't know what took over her but she didn't stop, she couldn't spot, she didn't _want _stop. It felt so good to finally be able to released al the anger, the resentment, the helplessness she had kept bottle up all this time. She knew deep down that the boy who was currently trying to shield his face from her punches didn't deserve this, he just kicked the ball too high, but in that moment she didn't care who she was punching as long as she let it all out. The boy didn't deserve it, but neither did she deserve all the bad things that happened to her, or did she?

It took three teachers to pull her away from the boy who was immediately brought to the hospital. But before they took him away she caught a glimpse of him. He was covered in blood and his left arm was twisted in an odd way, his shirt was torn apart and she could already see the bruises starting to form. There was no way she could have done that. She couldn't have done that; there was no way she could have done that. No way at all. But she had, had she not? She remembered landing a punch in his face and then all became red, she remembered feeling the adrenaline and the sound of bones breaking, she remembered feeling something well up in her, something she now recognized as joy. She had fell good, ecstatic even, when she was beating that boy. She had taken pleasure in breaking that boy's bones, and the worst part was she wanted to do it again. She was a monster.

After the incident she and her mom moved out of town, to start over. Her mom enrolled her in a new school and they move to a nice, simple house. Her mom wanted to start over. But how could she start over? This was how she was, this was _who_ she was. She couldn't changed that, no one could. She was a monster and she knew it

In school she was always alone, she had no friends to paly or talk to. It wasn't because they hadn't tried to befriend her; it was because she had rejected every single one of their attempts to get to know her. She was afraid of hurting somebody else, she was afraid of realizing the monster the lived within. So she rejected everyone. She would always glare at them and tell them to "Piss off" or to "Go bother someone else" They soon realized she didn't want anything to do with them, so they left her alone. It wasn't that she like being alone, in fact she hatted it. She hated all of it. How everyone would partner up and leave her out so she had to do the work all by herself. How she would have to sit alone at lunch because everyone was scared she might hurt them. How she had to watch from the sidelines as the other kids played tag or hide and seek, while she was left out, nobody even asked her if she wanted to play now, they knew what she would say already. But it was okay, she told herself, she brought this upon herself, it was her who made them scared of her. It was her fault they no longer dared to talk or even approach her. But, she couldn't help it, pushing them away. She was afraid, afraid of them leaving her. Because well, if her father left her what guaranteed they wouldn't leave her too?

Her mother was a mess after her father left, she would cry herself to sleep and stay in bed all day. Not going to work, not paying the bills, no longer caring about how she looked. She didn't eat anymore, nor did she take her out for their weekly movie night. She forgot to make breakfast one day and she dropped her at her school with an empty stomach. Her mother then forgot to make lunch and, when she asked for her help with some of her homework, her mother replied "Later sweetie. I promise I'll help you later". But, just as she did with that night's dinner, she forgot. Her mother lost herself when her father left them and well, she never found herself again.

So, she learned to take care of herself at an early aged, she was the one who cooked and cleaned the house. She also took care of her mother, reminding her to pay the bills, something she couldn't do by herself, not that she hadn't tried but being diagnosed with dyslexia was a major drawback when trying to read or doing a simple multiplication. She would also feed her mother, siting beside her in her bed and telling her about her day. Although she talked about her day to day life, she never told the truth about it. She created a fake one, one in which she had a lot of friends. Friend that she played tag and hide and seek with. Friends that would partner up with her in the schools projects, projects in which she would get the highest mark of the whole class. She created a life based on what she wanted her real life to be like. A life in which her mother took care of her, not the other way around.

One of the things she missed the most was hers and her mother's movie night. She had always waited in barely content excitement the Friday's nights when she and her mother would watch that week's action film in their living's room television, both of them wrapped in a cozy blanket with a bowl of popcorn in the coffee table in front of them. And every Friday night her father would appear seemingly out nowhere, bringing with him a new toy gun for her always increasing collection, just when the final fight was going to begin. He would sit with them and refuse the popcorn her mother would offer, just as he always did. Every time, when the fight ended and the credits rolled out, he would start to criticize the hero's fighting technic or the protagonist choice of weapon. And every time she would listen with rapt attention and hang to his every word. Her mother would shake her head in exasperation, but se would always make a comment now and then, agreeing or disagreeing with her father's point of view, witch then would lead to the same debate they had every Friday night about witch was the most efficient gun, in the end they would always asked her opinion, but they would find her already asleep in her mother's lap lulled by their never ending argument, her father would chuckle then, and he would carry her to her room and tucked her in. He would later kiss her mother goodnight and leave, seemingly banishing in the air, leaven without a trace. Not that she ever noticed, she was already asleep by then.

She didn't remember the last time she saw her father. She only remembered her father tucking her in after watching their weekly action film and planting a kiss in her forehead. She remembered being surprised by this gesture; her father wasn't a man who showed affection very often. He almost never hugged her neither did he hugged her mother very often. She didn't remember a single time he had kissed her on the forehead like he was doing now. She remembered being pleasantly surprised by that gesture of affection and smiling before sleep overtook her.

She thought she remembered her father saying in a strange, soft tone of voice "Sleep child, soon you shall go home". But she was already home, wasn't she? She must have been already asleep. Beside her father had never spoken to her in that kind voice. It was a dream she was already asleep.

The next Friday she found it hard to concentrate in the movie. They were already in the middle of the final battle and her father had yet to show up. They had eaten all the popcorn by then, what would her mother offer her dad now? The minutes passed, the hero had already fake died and he was in the process of coming back to life right now, but her father wasn't here yet. Where was he? He was ever late. Was he hurt? Had something bad happened? Or had his motorcycle just ran out of gas? She and her mother waited for her father till the credits came out, then her mother sent her to bed. She asked for her father but her mother just told her that he was probably just stuck in traffic and that she would see him next Friday and that she had to go to sleep seeing as it was getting late. She rolled in her bed for about one more hour, worrying about her father and wondering about what could have possibly happened so that he couldn't make it to their movie night. At last she went to sleep, reassuring herself that she would see him next Friday, her mother was right: he was probably just stuck in traffic

Friday came but her father did not. She waited. Movie after movie, she waited. But the door stayed closed. He disappeared seemingly banishing in the air, but this time she did notice.

Clarisse La Rue considered herself a freak for a long time…


End file.
